BHS Report: Brooklyn Up Less Than Manhattan
The second quarter market report from Brown Harris Stevens was released yesterday. It’s pretty thin on the Brooklyn data, which only the neighborhoods of Brooklyn Heights and Park Slope covered. Compared to the skyrocketing prices in Manhattan, the Brooklyn numbers are relatively blah. Townhouse prices in Brooklyn’s two fanciest nabes edged up just one percent,…
The second quarter market report from Brown Harris Stevens was released yesterday. It’s pretty thin on the Brooklyn data, which only the neighborhoods of Brooklyn Heights and Park Slope covered. Compared to the skyrocketing prices in Manhattan, the Brooklyn numbers are relatively blah. Townhouse prices in Brooklyn’s two fanciest nabes edged up just one percent, according to the report, to $578 a foot; meanwhile, studios were up 4 percent, one-bedrooms rose 2% and two-bedrooms dipped 4 percent. The $578 number sounds very low to us and has be getting dragged down by the South Slope since all the good stuff in prime Park Slope and Brooklyn Heights is more in the range of $700 to $900 a foot. More interesting than the year-over-year number, however is how Q2 compared to more recent quarters. According to the BHS report, average per square foot for townhouses in these two areas spiked to over $700 in 3Q 2006 before falling to $634 in the fourth quarter and $568 in the first quarter of this year. The second quarter number was almost two percent higher than the first quarter. But what about all the neighborhoods that are left out of the report? We suspect that there was something of a bifurcation of the market in which neighborhoods that were perceived to have made it safely over the gentrification hump saw prices bid up faster than those with greater perceived risk. Overall, we would expect to see more bullish results for the borough as a whole than the Slope and Heights numbers, which makes sense if you think of these two areas as the safe, low-beta blue-chip stocks.
I’ve been on the hunt as well throughout Brooklyn and it looks like Crown Heights, Bed-Stuy/Bushwick, and Lefferts Manor (on the outskirts of the historic district) are hovering in the 700’s range. Sellers in these areas are asking top dollar and many homes need serious improvements. I’ve been hard pressed to even find a new paint job for this price range. Sellers clearly feel confident enough to offer homes without much improvement as buyers move further into Brooklyn after facing bidding wars closer to the bridge. Ditmas Park has become almost impossible to find a single family in decent condition under $1 million. I’ve heard from many potential buyers that what some R.E. firms use to refer to as “other Brooklyn” has become outrageous in terms of pricing. You can’t even afford to buy a house on the block you got robbed on when you were growing up. It’s bitter sweet.
2:19
Talk about a freudian slip “at lease”
I find it hard to believe the BK is down. I’ve been out pounding the street looking for something affordable (sub 700k?) w/ outdoor space and a few other things and it’s been tough slogging. And I’m willing to go to some of the more transitional nabes. Whenver there’s anything good, a freaking bidding war breaks out. So, anecdontally at lease, I don’t know if I’m buying that brooklyn is down. It seems that most prime or offprime areas are headed higher rather quickly. (ditmas park especially)
Brower Park – I agree with you. We get very media slanted real estate info here in NY. That insist on giving stats for very limited areas (Manhattan – most of the time south of 96th St, some Brownstone Brooklyn ‘hoods, etc) to make more interesting reading and feed the public facination with the life and prices wealthy people pay.
Rarely in NYTimes, local blogs, RE Broker releases do you read about average price for NEW YORK CITY or metro area.
I love the way the compare Manhattan prices to other metro areas. But do they ever take the eletie top 10% of SFrancisco neighborhoods and compare to NYC? I guess have to face it. Besides restaurant snobs here, we’re also real estate snobs and prefer to forget about majority of NY.
Would it not make more sense to have a report with the numbers coming from all segments of the real estate community? A pipe dream perhaps, but Corcoran and the other blue chip firms do not have accurate statistics in neighborhoods like mine, where more sales are made by smaller, “no name” local brokers, and perhaps even national firms like Foxtons or Century 21, over those by the large firms, most of whom seem to only take the more expensive listings. We may not have a total volume of sales to equal more expensive communities, but surely all of the other sales here and in other Bklyn communities east of Flatbush would skew up the numbers somewhat. And what about the rest of Brooklyn? Brownstone areas are only a part of Brooklyn real estate. I don’t get how these numbers, as reported, would mean much of anything.
The truth is, Brooklyn property prices are directly influenced by Manhattan. If Manhattan goes up, BK must follow.
Off topic, but I just posted in the forum an inquiry about Kingsview Coops. I’m looking to buy, and would love to hear about the area, the coops, if you are familiar with it. My email is nonpareil AT gmail.com. Thanks!
Houses and condos are not stocks. No 2 houses are the same. They are all different products. And to keep making analogies to stock market or using stock lingo (blue-chip, beta)only confuses the issue.
Also, the more you break down housing data (by neighborhood, time period, classification,( 1, 2 3 bdroom) the more easily skewed the stats can become..because numbers/units sold become so small any comparison becomes meaningless.
To really think that 1 neighborhood is up 1 quarter and down next and next neighborhood is down 1 and up the next is nuts.
Best to look at inventory of unsold, length of time on market, and total number of sales.
what about fort greene or downtown brooklyn?
is there a chance we can get such market info for these areas as well?